


Human On My Faithless Arm

by Rubynye



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Breeding, Clothed Sex, Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Gang Rape, Gangbang, Held Down, Multi, Tragedy, Wet & Messy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 04:22:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10586346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: The last time Natasha cried.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soseta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soseta/gifts).



> Written for SMutSwap 2017, for Soseta's awesome prompts! Title from Auden's "Lullaby".

On her third day out, Natalia finds a boy. Young man, really, dwarfed by the pack and bedroll on his back, folded over a pile of sticks he's trying to light with frantic curses and friction. He's slender and short, likely not much taller than she, his hair a soft brown. She has not been forbidden from being seen, so she deliberately takes a noisy step onto a dry branch, and he looks up, his warm-tea eyes wide behind round black-framed glasses.

"Are you an angel?" he asks, his voice light baritone, a boy's.

"Are you a fool?" she answers, gesturing at herself, heavy coat and boots, dangling canteen and satchel, hair crammed beneath a knit cap. Did angels exist, they wouldn't need to dress for a winter's hike.

His face splits into a wide smile, teeth neatly gleaming. "Yes," he agrees, dropping his sticks, dusting off his hands in their fingerless gloves. "I'm bright enough to know I'm immeasurably stupid. Most definitely a fool."

Natalia doesn't want to like him. She steps closer. "This is a bad place for a fire." An open, windy slope between thick stands of trees, it would make for a good ambush, not a good rest.

"Clearly, you know more than I." No sarcasm, all cheer, he gets to his feet, his pack jingling. "I'm Vasileivich. Oleg Vasileivich Baranov."

"You're forward," Natalia says, as if scandalized by his friendliness, but she steps closer anyway, just two paces from arm's reach. "We've just met." 

"And you've already saved me from a fruitless fire and a poor choice of campgrounds." Vasileivich steps, not towards but alongside her, matching pace for pace. "My friendly angel."

"You are surely a fool." She would smile, if she hadn't been trained in control. "Call me Romanova."

"My lady Romanova," he answers, and, telling herself it's merely the appropriate response, she lets herself smile.

**** 

As they crunch through the snow-dusted woods, they talk, she of her cover as a botany student, he of his graduate studies in physics, how they both came to be on solitary woodland hikes. "My advisor said I needed a break, some fresh air." Vasileivich frowns. He _pouts_. "I didn't want any."

The low red sunlight spills across the curve of his cheek, glittering in the fine specks of beard. Despite the crisp air, Natalia feels no chill. She wonders briefly if she's reacting to the shots she was given before being dropped in the wilderness. Turning reflexively away from what pleases her, she looks down across the landscape, points behind the ridge, and says, "That would make good shelter."

"Lead on, my lady," is his response, and she snorts delicately as she turns their path, swallowing hard over the blooming warmth in her chest.

A proper fire, shared rations, and a deep sleep later, Natalia wakes to predawn stillness, the slightest tinge of blue to the eastern sky, the stars scattered between the loose branches above them, the curve of her back tucked to Vasileivich's. His sleeping roll luxuriously soft beneath her cheek, his ankles overlapping hers, he radiates warmth even through his coats. She hasn't slept so peacefully since she can remember.

Sitting up, she turns and leans over his sleeping form, observing the broad curve of his closed eye, his mittened hand tucked beneath his cheek, a tiny icicle glinting under his nostril. A strange bubbling sensation rises through her, as she decadently wastes a long moment just looking, just basking. 

Vasileivich stirs, and Natalia flinches away, scrambling to her feet, snatching up her canteen, the only item she removed before sleep. She could vanish into the woods, leave him as she found him. She could loot his pack or take it away with her. She could probably open his jugular with any of her knives before he even woke. 

She stands, watching this boy breathe, a person, not a target nor a fellow trainee, no instructor nor a master nor a task, someone brought to her purely by fate. At length he slowly opens his eye, then blinks and rolls over, his wide-eyed look fading into a smile like the sunrise behind him. "Morning, Romanova."

"Morning, Vasilieivich," she answers, and doesn't run, and answers his smile.

******

As they hike through their next day, heading in towards the city, Vasileivich continues to be witty and antic, enlivening his speech with full arm-waves and little jigs despite his heavy pack, and wins two different spontaneous smiles from Natalia. At this pace they'll reach the city limits by tomorrow midday, and she'll wave him on his way back to his university, then take herself back to the ballet school, as instructed.

Not for the first time, as she looks into his laughing brown eyes, Natalia thinks of stealing herself, of running away, vanishing into the city, taking a train anywhere. But it's easy enough to see the test of obedience in this solo survival practice. Natalia knows the Red Room must have measures in place to recover her if she runs.

They said nothing against joining forces with a fellow traveler, though, and she hasn't been alone, aside of during Reconditioning, for long years now. So she privately wallows in Vasilievich's company as they cross snow-dusted open woods and the sun crosses the bright winter sky.

It is not until past nightfall, as they lie chatting on the bedroll, that they finally suffer a note of disharmony. He settles from laughing to quiet, and she watches him outlined by starlight, feeling the air change. "I've lied to you," he says, and she blinks at him, her spine stiffening, her belly tensing against the possibility of a fight. "By omission, at least. I'm not ... " 

Not what he's said he is? Another program's agent? Natalia forces herself to wait calmly, neither surging forward to press a blade to his throat and shake the truth out of him, nor rolling away to run into the night and leave him as she found him. She keeps her breathing steady despite her pounding heartbeat, and listens.

"My advisor," he resumes at last, "sent me out here to 'clear my head', because I got two men killed." 

"How?" Natalia's training asks him with her voice.

He takes a long, deep breath, the cloud of it puffing away into the air above them. "Last spring I was recruited for a program..." His words drip into her ears, hushed and slow. "My advisor knew a man who knew a man..." Like honey in winter. "Before I knew it I was working two days a week on fissionables." Like oozing poison, as her gut clenches in warning. "Specifically on miniaturizing them. Nuclear grenades, if we succeed, or smaller."

"Wait," Natalia breathes. "Wait, should you--"

"I'm not sure I have a choice anymore," he says, young and accurate and misunderstanding. "I don't think they'd allow me to quit."

Natalia's sure of that, but it's beside her point. "Oleg," she says intently, because some things go deeper than friendship, "should you even tell me about this?"

"I've been bursting with it," he puffs out. "I couldn't tell any of my friends, anyone. But we're out here alone, and I know I can trust you." He smiles at her. "I can see it in your eyes."

"But..." Natalia's voice dies in her throat. Oleg -- Vasileivich -- keeps looking intently into her. Seven heartbeats, ten, and he asks, "Romanova, may I kiss you?"

Natalia wants, suddenly and sorely, to say yes. "No," she says, and doesn't look at his soft lips, and turns over, facing into the darkness. "I'm sorry. No."

"Oh." He blows out another long breath, a warm gust on the back of her neck, and she takes a breath of her own, lets it out, and reaches back. He folds his hand into hers, palm to mittened palm, and squeezes gently before letting go.

***** 

Natalia wakes this time with his warmth draped all down her back and defiance beating in her pulse. _Why not?_ she asks herself, leaning back into the softness of his bundled coats, his breath gentle in her ear. Why not choose for once who fucks her, claim a bit of sweetness to remember next time she's ordered to perform for some functionary or seduce a mark? They're alone here, miles from the city, from any watchers. Why not?

She rolls over and he breathes a little questioning noise, drifting up to wakefulness. "Oleg," she whispers again, because some things are even above friendship, "may I kiss you?"

His eyes pop open and crinkle at the corners with his grin. "Am I dreaming?" 

"Don't ask stupid questions," she tells him, and kisses him, letting herself be eager; artlessly, clumsily, as if untrained, uninstructed, she wraps her jacketed arms around his coat-thickened waist and presses their bundled bodies together. A moment, his mouth trembling in shock, and then he grasps her shoulders, whimpers through his nose, and kisses her back.

Clumsily, fervently, they clutch and cling, opening to the kiss; he tastes sleep-sour, their teeth click against each other, she laughs and he laughs to her, wildly, happily kissing in the dawn. This is nothing like every careful, artful seduction she's ever performed, it's sweet with honesty and she reaches for more, stripping off her mittens to unfasten his coat buttons. He rolls them so his opened coat falls around her, a tiny warm tent around them both, and pulls his arms from the sleeves, unfastening her outer jacket and reaching inside for her; as he tucks his arms beneath her back she cradles his hips between her thighs and unzips his inner jacket, burrowing her hands beneath his sweaters and shirt, reaching the tenderness of hot skin.

He gasps, pulling her tightly to him, as she slides her palms up his wiry back, over the fragile span of his shoulder blades. "Romanova," he moans against her lips, shuddering under her hands, between her thighs.

"Call me Natalia," she murmurs back and kisses him, smearing their mouths together, letting her heart and voice fly in her own moan as his fingertips push up beneath her clothes to find her waist, her spine, the edge of her brassiere, the under curve of her breast.

"Oh," Oleg cries out, "oh, Natalia, please, let me see you?"

"It's five below," she answers tartly, and he laughs against her cheek. "Feel me," she murmurs more softly, and he nods into kissing her all over her face until she giggles with actual sincerity, as his exploring hands map the curves of her waist, hips, and bottom, soft and warm over her hidden skin. "My pants," she tells him, "Let's get them--"

"Oh yes," between hot deep kisses, the wet heat of his mouth, "Natalia," as his quivering hands stumble on her buttons and she goads him with fingertips denting his shoulders, "Natashashenka," two pet names nonsensically merged as he presses his face behind her ear, pushing up her hat with his nose.

She pulls out a hand to pull off the hat, cold air drenching her hair, but the rest of her is meltingly warm as Oleg kisses her and moans delightedly over her and strips her pants and leggings and underwear all down to her mid-thighs, as his hands slide worshipfully over her bared behind before scrabbling at his own trousers.

"Let me just," she murmurs, patting his chest, and he inhales and pushes up on his elbows, letting her pull her legs in and up as they share another frantic kiss. They wriggle together, getting her knees up over his shoulder, and she holds his greatcoat around their shoulders as he leans on one hand and puffs heat into her hair and guides himself into her with the other.

A nudge, a push, she exhales and tips her hips up towards him, and he groans low as he sinks in, hard and deep inside her. "Yes," she breathes, her hand on his lower back as he plants both of his either side of her billowing ribcage. "Come on, yes. Oleg," she adds deliberately, because this is theirs, because she can, and he presses his panting mouth to her temple as they bounce against each other, crashing after pleasure. Natalia opens her mouth and lets little cries fall free, clinging to his surging shoulders, absorbing his every huff, every shudder, every slick thumping thrust, the slap of skin on skin, the slick friction within her as their hips frantically revolve.

It doesn't last long. It surely couldn't. Oleg's groan opens into a wail against her forehead, hot breath drenching her hair as he pulses, and Natalia smiles breathlessly just to feel his honestly won pleasure, just because she can. "Oof," he gasps, going limp, and he's lucky she's stronger than she looks as he melts atop her, as she grants him a few heaving breaths before prodding him in the ribs. "Oh, apologies, apologies." He pushes up on trembling arms, pressing his cheek to her cloth-coated knee, and she looks up at him, smiling in the low pink sunlight, his eyes lash-fringed and warmly dark.

Natalia smiles back, wide and bright as she never smiles unless performing, but this one is true, this one is hers, this one is Oleg's. He earned it.

He blinks, and leans down for one more quick kiss, and wriggles back, withdrawing, trying to keep his coat over them both as he slumps to her side. A stunned "Oh," is all he says, and Natalia straightens her legs and pulls up her pants one-handed, keeping the other arm tucked around his waist, tucking her head beneath his chin. As soon as she can she wraps her arm back around his ribs, his draped around her shoulders, and nothing moves but the slow brightening of the sunlight.

*** 

Eventually they get up, because hunger calls, nature calls, the comforts of the city call. But they get up laughing more than talking, and as they walk onwards through the open woods they leave one hand each bare so they can twine fingers. Where Oleg was previously antic he is now quiet, an dby his side Natalia feels almost weightless, as if light ran in her veins rather than blood. Hand in warm hand with this boy she could almost believe in the myth of first man and woman, wandering alone together through Eden's beautiful solitude.

Of course, he eventually asks, "When may I see you again?" The necessary response weighs her down a little, enough to reminds her to think of him as Vasileivich as she breathes.

As she tells him, "I don't know if that would be wise."

"Have you betrayed your lover?" is his first guess, and she shakes her head. "Would your father not like me? Your mother? Give me the chance, I can charm them."

She could almost laugh, a tiny shard of pain lodging in her heart. "It's not that," she answers, and she should tell him one of her prepared lies, kiss him goodbye, finish her assignment. But she just murmurs again, "Not that."

Oleg draws in a breath, and blows it out. They walk into a more open patch, wide sky above and crisp grass below. And then he says, instead of any anticipated words, a puzzled, "Ow."

Natalia turns her head. A hypodermic dart quivers in his throat. "Don't," her training says as she catches his reaching hand, but the turn of his head is enough, brushing the dart's side against his shoulder, triggering its injection. "Oleg?"

His hands go limp, his eyes roll up, he collapses beside her.

She's stood still too long, darts sting her cheek and wrist and ear; she freezes in mid-whirl to keep from triggering them, but injections burn into her skin. It's all futile. They were remotely triggered to begin with.

One, two, four figures emerge from the woods, wolves on two legs, eyes glittering from their slitted balaclavas. Ice in her belly, lead in her veins, Natalia's hands won't rise to her command; the hard ground slams into her knees, slaps her in the face, and darkness swallows all.

***** 

_Thump, thump, thump_ , pounding inside her, slick yet burning, raising a deep bruise. Hips tilted up off the ground, cold sticks denting her back, rounded weights on her wrists, coarse cloth pressing down her tongue, twisted bands binding her ankles to her thighs. Chill air searing her bared skin, grunting and gleeful voices above her, canvas-clad hips chafing her scoured labia, thrusts thumping inside her.

Nothing covers her eyes. She flings them open, tensing for action.

All she gains is useless knowledge and mocking laughter. Two men kneel on her arms, each gripping the cloth twisted around one of her legs, pulling them back and out for the benefit of the brute fucking her. She clenches her cramped fingers, but she can't reach anything, no one's leg, not a stick or even dirt, flat stones chill beneath each hand. All she wins is a groan from the man in her and laughter from his helpers. "Tightened enough to nip my tadpole off!" he puffs, and she _would_ , she's been training with those barbels, but nothing in her body moves as it should, her fingers twitching, her muscles cramping and uncooperative, all of her leaden. "Make the little cunt do it again!" and she knows she knows his voice.

"Will you hurry, then?" asks Leftwards, curving long rough fingers to her breast and squeezing. It hurts, she hurts inside, aching under every thrust, in every cramping muscle, and Oleg's nowhere to be seen, she hopes they took him away, back to his school--

Rightwards punches her belly, a spreading splash of pain, and she coughs against the gag as the man on her cheers hoarsely and picks up the pace, jostling the breath from her lungs. "Idiot!" from behind halts the second blow, "little toy's not ours to damage, remember?"

Natalia twists towards the voice, if only to learn more about her captors, and sees Oleg, gagged with her mitten bound into his mouth, kneeling before the speaker, who holds his chin up with one hand, a knife tip beside his eye with the other. His eyes are wide and wet and bleak, full of her degradation, full of horror.

Natalia has been trained in silence but "No!" pounds inside her deeper than she's being fucked, pushing up her throat, but the gag crushes her scream down to a moan. All her thrashing shifts her not a millimeter, and the men laugh and laugh, and she knows them by type. Some low-level functionaries from the Red Room, a cleanup crew. Oleg's as good as dead and she's unlikely to be so fortunate.

Failure and remorse and agony twist together into a sob, Natalia clenches shut her burning eyes, but the gag crushes all her noise into throaty sounds that make the men cheer, makes the one fucking her puff, "Patience, Bonbon, I'm gonna give it to you," amidst general laughter. Leftward squeezes her breasts alternately, and each sharp wrench makes her jump despite herself, tensing around each invading thrust until he slams in yet more roughly and bellows with each spurt inside her, fetid breath puffing across her face. 

Huffing satisfaction, he pulls out of her on a sordid wet sound, cold air rushing in to prickle her hot battered flesh. "Your turn," he addresses Leftwards, and Natalia forces her slack body to tense towards motion. A transfer might be a chance --

They may be grunts but they're trained, well enough to transfer without ever letting her go. She jerks nevertheless and the cloth bites into her ankle and thigh, crushing bands of pain into her flesh; the first laughs at her, deep and hooting, and Rightwards gleefully backhands her, a stinging imprint on her cheek as her head rolls on the hard ground. 

In all this she almost lost track of the former Leftwards, but here he is, settling between her thighs; he grips her hips, pulling her up into his first thrust, her trapped arms straining under her captors' heft, his thudding weight knocking her breath away. "Mm, a buttery bun," he comments as he draws out and out, then slams in again, lighting up every bruise, agony pulling her spine into a tight arch. Natalia sets her teeth against the cloth jamming her mouth, fighting to be quiet, fighting every thrust, but she can't tense enough, she can't coordinate herself, she can't do anything but lie on frozen dirt and be used.

Used, and mocked. "That's the spirit!" he says, tweaking her nipple ,and whimpered dismay leaks out around the gag, an acid tear sears down her cheek. Rightwards snorts piggishly and leans in to lick it, hot and wet against the chill crisp air. "Keep fighting!" he encourages and slams in again, heavy balls battering her upraised ass. "Honey in hot tea!"

She would go limp just to defy him, but her muscles keep twitching randomly, arms and legs and down her sides, her back against the crumpling grass, even her cunt spasming around him. He groans lasciviously over her, tipping forward, a broken stick jabbing her spine as he rides her hard, jagged waves of pain radiating through her core from each speeding thrust. Her body reflexively tries to thrash and she goes nowhere, nowhere at all but crushed beneath one more man's heaving, shuddering weight. 

At length, after forever, he sucks in a satisfied breath and heaves himself off her, out of her, away but not far enough. He pats her belly, murmuring, "there's a good little cunt," and her skin crawls under his gloved hand. She makes the mistake of letting her eyelids loosen, and all she sees is Rightwards' obscenely tented trousers and Oleg's quivering shoulder beyond him, and wrenching shame crimps her eyes shut again. She fails to even try to wrench herself free during this transfer, still but for more tears burning down her cheeks.

Formerly-Rightwards hums deep. "I thought these baby spiders were tougher." His textured gloves are sandpapery on her waist.

"This one's tender as a pounded cutlet," says the first, tugging her thigh back a little more, chill bumps prickling up on her bare flesh. 

"Careful, you brute," calls the one holding Oleg, and her heart twists inside her chest, "I'm not taking blame for your damage."

She jerks before she even feels the touch beside her neck, knit mask and chapped lips on the skin Oleg sanctified with kisses. "Pfft," Rightwards replies, deep and close to her ear, "I just want to taste the juicy little thing." As he shoves into her he smears his open mouth down her throat, ragged teeth and flexing slab of tongue, and her memories of Oleg's kisses crumple and vanish under the feel of his slurping and nibbling as he pounds more pain into her. She clutches at the memories of pleasure as this man presses hard fingers into her waist and sucks her breast into his mouth, and all she can feel is the chilly ground and the knees denting her arms and the interminable straining ache of being fucked yet again. 

Something cracks under that pounding, deeper than flesh and bone, shattering, vanishing. Natalia has been commanded to submit before. She has been forced to submit as punishment, but never before like this, man after man on the hard ground, and a bright soul about to be extinguished on her account. And she can do nothing to fight back at all.

He rakes her nipple between his teeth and her body cries out, dampened sound disappearing into the sodden gag. He bites her other breast and digs his thumbs into her hips and hunches over her, snuffling like a feasting pig, and she is completely helpless. He finally orgasms, spurting inside her, and she just lies there. He gets off her and the air swirls cold over her; he rips the taped-in gag away and shoves his thick flexing tongue into her slack mouth, one more invasion, and her heart congeals cold within her. 

They move her about like a broken toy, shoving her up enough to tie her nerveless arms together as her hair hangs filthy around her face, then dropping her again. A kick rolls her over across the prickly ground, harsh laughter booms overhead as they tie her wrists and ankles together, a hard hand grips her hair and she just dangles by her burning scalp.

Until the seeming leader says, "So, Baranov, what do you think of your little girlfriend now?"

Natalia's eyes flash open. She lies on her side in the crushed grass and sticks and dirt, Oleg's overflowing eyes fixed on hers. The man holding him reaches back, knife flashing, and she can see every moment flow sluggishly by as his hand sinks behind Oleg, as the knife bites into and through Oleg, shoving his coatfront outwards like a last, strongest heartbeat, as his tea-warm eyes go round and then blank, the life leaving them.

Natalia watches Oleg's body fall from his killer's hand, slowly thudding to the ground. She watches until his bedroll falls across her and hard arms bundle her in it, lifting her up like a wrapped package, destined for the Red Room.

**

Despite it all Natalia's time sense never leaves her. It's only twenty minutes until she's carried like luggage into Madame's office and dumped on the tile floor. A knife slid between cloth and skin cuts her bonds on both sides, but she doesn't even try to attack any of the feet and hands and legs around her, just falls flat on her front. There's no point. It's all futile.

Madame _tsks_ , and slowly, Natalia pulls her aching legs beneath her, smeared thighs sliding against each other. Slowly, she presses her palms to the tile and gathers her useless body into at least a tidier huddle. But it takes Madame's long fingers, nails sharp beneath her chin, to lift her head. "Romanova," Madame says, looking into her face, then lets her drop. "What a disappointment. What a _mess_."

Even after the morning's agonies, the judgment stings, salt and acid on flayed bruises. Natalia should respond, "Yes, Madame." She lets her forehead rest on the cool tile as little shivers travel up and down her limbs, as her dry eyes prickle.

"You failed," Madame informs her. "The boy, and all our good work, and yourself. Because I am feeling generous, this once I will enlighten you."

At last, from a dry mouth, Natalia manages the expected, "Yes, Madame." But her head cannot lift, her hair fallen in rough twiggy clumps around her face, debris poking her sore skin. 

"He failed as well," Madame says, and Natalia's traitorous heart jerks sideways in her chest. "He was tested against babbling secrets to the nearest pretty face, and failed, thoroughly, while you meanwhile let yourself be seduced." 

They were set up to meet. Natalia should think of the signs she missed, the ways she failed. She should think at all. She absorbs Madame's words, piling them in her hollowed out mind for later, for when she can think again, for when she can do anything besides ache, naked and filthy on the tiled floor. "Yes, Madame," she whispers between scraped lips.

"You thought you could have a secret bit of fun, use yourself for your own pleasure." Madame's words fall, chill as icicles. "Such stupidity is unlike you, Romanova, so let me tell you, once and clearly, that you are ours. Your body, your mind, your past, your future, all belong to us. You will not misuse our property again."

Natalia could almost thank her for the straightforwardness. She could throw her head back and scream. She shivers on the floor and murmurs, "Yes, Madame."

"Now, you are going to private quarters until I can be sure you won't infect the others with your recklessness." The door opens behind Natalia, and something inside her, some tiny unquenched spark, turns her neck enough to see that the two orderlies behind her are at least not any of the retrieval team who raped and returned her. "These lads will escort you there. Clean yourself up and await futhrer orders."

Large hands wrap around her arms and shoulders, pulling her to her feet. Leaves and dust fall from her hair and whisper down her skin, a patchwork of aches extend from her thighs to her navel, a thick drop patters between her feet, another, a third. Natalia doesn't, can't look up, trembling behind her eyelashes. But she murmurs once more, "Yes, Madame."

*** 

The next morning Natalia surfaces from the void of sleep and realizes she must be headed to Reconditioning. Then she remembers that she was used to bait Oleg to his death. Then she curls up around herself, and waits for the torment she deserves.

It doesn't come. Eventually her body pulls her out of the terrified ball into servicing its needs, but those routine chores are finished soon enough. She sits back down on the cot, facing the wall, and tries to remember Oleg, his animated chatter, his touch, his kisses. She can only recall knowing they happened, as if she'd been briefed on them. She tries to remember the pleasure they shared and only recalls the pain the retrieval team pounded into her. She tries to remember his kiss and can only remember the mocking kiss the leader forced onto her slack mouth as he wrapped her in the bedroll.

By the time the orderlies come for her she's curled up again, tighter than ever.

However, she is taken not to Reconditioning but to ordinary training. Mathematics, languages, computers, sparring, the other girls no more or less quiet than usual. After the evening meal she is returned to the single room, and the next morning she realizes that they've come for her two hours later than the usual day's start.

It seems puzzlingly gentle, for no discernible reason, but Natalia's mind aches like her body, bruised all over. She opts to just exist in a gentle miasma of privacy and classes and rest.

Then comes the sixth day. Natalia wakes up not on the cot but on a gurney, an intravenous line in her arm, her limbs restrained and a low ache in her belly. When the sitter sees her awake, he gets up and leaves the room, and she has nothing to do but to stare at the green walls and consider if it's worth trying to figure out what was done to her this time.

Madame enters, the lines of her eyebrows less severe than the last time she spoke to Natalia. "Well, Romanova, you have redeemed yourself somewhat," she says, sitting in the vacated chair. "Three viable embryos. The boy was a fool in some ways but brilliant in others, and at least now we have his genetic material, thanks to you." 

"Three," Natalia echoes. "It was a fertility treatment." The injections before they sent her out on the hike. "Am I --?"

"No, no, don't be stupid," Madame says airily. "Would we waste you on incubation? They've been frozen for future gestation."

"Yes, Madame," Natalia responds, while a strange hollowed defiance expands inside her. "But how do you know they're his?"

"Oh, my handy lads all shoot blanks," Madame replies. "You don't think we'd use them with you girls otherwise? This is why you're the tool and we do the wielding." She pats Natalia's hand, trapped by restraints, and Natalia has enough control built back up to keep herself from clenching her fist. "Now stop asking impertinent questions and get some rest. When you come back you'll take a course in drugged fighting, so you won't be taken down so simply again."

Choking on desperate, forbidden curiosity, Natalia can only parrot, "Thank you, Madame."

Madame must be quite pleased with her indeed, because as she gets up she answers Natalia's unvoiced question. "Of course, first you have to survive your Reconditioning."

_Coda_

As Natasha rappels down the cratered concrete wall she muses on whether she went too easy on Sluin. It's been many years, longer for him than her, but she still recognized his gravelly voice when he lifted his grizzled head and barked, "I won't tell you anything!" before his eyes narrowed, then widened in recognition.

She didn't say anything, just waited for his realization to sink in. "Black Widow," he choked up, then visibly mustered what was left of him and added, "the little red cunt," obviously hoping to anger her into prematurely ending the interrogation and his miserable existence. "I remember fucking you into the dirt when you were just a half-grown whore!"

As she lands on her toes, she remembers with some satisfaction how light her tone stayed as she answered, "And you never even paid," the way his crease-framed eyes went round with terror as she slipped out a switchblade. "But you will now," she added, flicking it open. He didn't even notice the pencil torch in her other hand.

She left him alive, of course. He certainly didn't earn the mercy of death. As she picks the door lock she decides to stop debating herself, that he'll probably be sad enough about what she cut off him before and after he told her what she needed to know. 

The stairwell inside descends into darkness, the air still and stale. Everything fits with the unused sub-basement she was told to expect, but she still comms Clint before proceeding. "Door open, looks clear."

"Good. Still got plenty of time." Fury allotted their private mission 96 hours, after their last assignment turned up a lead on the Red Room's breeding program. Natasha checks her chrono -- 11:52 left, plenty of time indeed -- and tosses a weighted ball-bearing down the stairs. It clanks safely all the way to the bottom, so she carefully steps after it, poised to duck back or dive forwards as necessary.

Nothing happens, the whole way down. All she finds at the bottom is a prosaic old light switch and an easily picked lock. The light above flickers familiarly, just Clint on her six, closing the door silently behind him. 

Down the dark hallway, third door on the left, the generator humming beneath the floor the whole way. They reach the door the records mentioned, the room housing the stock of 'practical goods', a program's worth of frozen embryos and samples. Natasha doesn't allow herself hesitation, turns the unlocked knob, pushes open the door and steps back.

No sound, no ambush, no one waiting for them, but then she left Sluin in no shape to talk, let alone type. Clint cases the room with flashlight and gun, steps in delicately, flicks the light on, and Natasha follows him in.

An ordinary little room, two tables, four benches, the three dusty green freezers just as described. And, Natasha realizes, nothing else. No sound at all, no hum of refrigeration, no whir of fans. The silence of unpowered machinery, of a tomb.

"Nat," Clint starts, but she strides forward, heading for the first freezer. Maybe some of the stocks are elsewhere. She holds her breath as she opens it, room-temperature air swirling around her face as she scans the racks of vials labeled with names from a lifetime ago. Among them, in perfect Cyrillic order, sit three labeled with "Baranov x Romanova", all filled with murky yellow liquid, and nothing else.

All of the Red Room's breeding program, gone, all those hopes, all that pain. 

Natasha shuts the door, turns around, takes a huge breath. Her chest shudders. She takes a step, eyes prickling, throat tightening. She steps again, tightness constricting her breathing. She looks up at Clint, the tense creases bordering his eyes, and a harsh sound falls out of her mouth, another, another, shuddering up through her.

"Nat," Clint says again, his eyes unbearably kind, his steady arm curling around her shaking shoulders as he sits them down together. Hiding her face from the harsh light, her cheek pressed to his pulse, Natalia leans on Clint, remembers young Oleg's tea-brown eyes, and lets herself cry.


End file.
